Pius X, 1903-1914

philosophers; why, they even profess to be entirely without experience of philosophy. This they do with consummate astuteness, lest, for example, anyone think that they are imbued with the prejudiced opinions of philosophy, and for this reason, as they say, are not at all objective. Yet the truth is that their history or criticism bespeaks pure philosophy; and whatever conclusions are arrived at by them, are derived by right reasoning from their philosophic principles. This is indeed easily apparent to one who reflects.—The first three canons of such historians and critics, as we have said, are those same principles which we adduced from the philosophers above: namely, agnosticism, the theorem of the transfiguration of things by faith, and likewise another which it seemed could be called disfiguration. Let us now note the consequences that come from them individually.—According to agnosticism, history, just as science, is concerned only with phenomena. Therefore, just as God, so any divine intervention in human affairs must be relegated to faith, as belonging to it alone. Thus, if anything occurs consisting of a double element, divine and human, such as are Christ, the Church, the sacraments, and many others of this kind, there will have to be a division and separation, so that what was human may be assigned to history, and what divine to faith. Thus, the distinction common among the modernists between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith, the Church of history and the Church of faith, the sacraments of history and the sacraments of faith, and other similar distinctions in general.—Then this human element itself, which we see the historian assume for himself, must be mentioned, such as appears in documents, raised above historical conditions by faith through transfiguration. So, the additions made by faith must in turn be dissociated, and relegated to faith itself, and to the history of faith; so when Christ is being discussed, whatever surpasses the natural condition of man, as is shown by psychology, or has been raised out of the place and the time in which He lived, must be dissociated.—Besides, in accord with the third principle of philosophy those things also which do not pass beyond the field of history, they view through a sieve, as it were, and eliminate all and relegate likewise to faith, which in their judgment, as they say, are not in the logic of facts or suited to the characters. Thus they do not will that Christ said those things which appear to exceed the capacity of the listening multitude. Hence from His real history they delete and transfer to faith all his allegories that occur in His discourses. Perhaps we shall ask by what law these matters are dissociated? From the character of the man, from the condition which He enjoyed in the state; from His education, from the complexus of the incidents of any fact, in a word, if we understand well, from a norm which finally at some time recedes into the merely subjective. They aim, of course, themselves to take on the character of Christ and, as it were, to make it their own;